Benji is my seventh dog, in nearly sixty years of living. I've already had to do that more than once, thank you.
There's a vast, yawning and (for most folks, at any rate) readily comprehensible difference between someone dying of natural causes, and leaving a loved one to die -- alone and afraid -- in the cold and the wild.
“...and leaving a loved one to die — alone and afraid — in the cold and the wild.”
A dog that weighs over 100 lbs, on a 14,000’ mountain?
If the dog refuses to move, and you don’t have both special equipment and lots of help, then the dog AIN’T coming down. If it were me, I would go back, but it would take blind luck to find the dog a few days after the storm. The rescuers were only able to do so because the dog became too weak to move on its own from where one person stumbled upon it.
“There’s a vast, yawning and (for most folks, at any rate) readily comprehensible difference between someone dying of natural causes, and leaving a loved one to die — alone and afraid — in the cold and the wild.”
Yes, yes, there is and I’m guilty! About 5 years ago the day before Thanksgiving, UPS or someone left my gate open. About half an hour had passed when I realized my little dog hadn’t come back to the door and I discovered the open gate. She was a rescue critter and now she was getting old and crippled, so I thought she couldn’t have gotten far. This was a very remote, wooded area.
Everyone had already left for the Holiday, so there was no one to help me look and it was getting cold. My back was not doing well, so I grabbed my staff and started looking. Not a sign, no one had seen her. I looked until it was too dark. Then it snowed. I felt like the biggest loser on earth!
The next day, I started looking again, up and down those hills. Needless to say Thanksgiving dinner never happened for me. I delivered my pies, borrowed my son’s dog who did pick up her trail but the trail just seemed to ‘end’. We searched again until dark. And it snowed again.
I was never able to find out what happened to that poor critter. I put up fliers, ran ads, all the usual stuff. She was kinda cute, so I hope someone just took her home.